Uplifted Roman Empire

[Enoki]

What you need is a legion of about 1000 men but more important than giving them muskets or better weapons is giving them better tools. Handing a legion that is as much an engineering unit as a combat unit, good picks, shovels, axes, and other hand tools would buy you far more than just better weapons.

With good tools, and possibly some power tools to help brought from the future (think how much more they get done with a portable sawmill and a few chain saws than axes, adzes, spoke shaves, hand saws, etc.). This would allow them to rapidly build good shelter, fortifications, and other basic infrastructure.

Sure, they can fight when needed, but that wouldn't be their daily role. Think of them as combat engineers more than infantry.

As for disease and illness, just knowing how these propagate and how to minimize risk of them developing--for example knowing how to make a simple activated charcoal and sand filter for water to make it safer to drink would be a big advance--goes a long way here.

 

[Diveguy]

Here's the idea, a mysterious stranger managed to work his way into the court of Emperor Trajan in 113 AD. He manages to get the attention of the Emperor because he is from the future, the Solomani Confederation to be precise, he managed to steal a time machine and travel back to this time period and here he plans to change history. He brought a bunch of high tech gadgets and he has a stolen Imperium scout/courier ship equipped with a Time Jump Drive (perhaps of alien origin) aside from the time drive his gadgets are TL 15 or less, he figures on getting on the good side of the Emperor and building the Roman Empire into an Interstellar Empire.

What potential pitfalls are there?

How fast can the Roman Empire advance in tech level? I believe they have a population of 60 million out of a world population of 300 million. The time Traveller doesn't care about social reform, he is willing to let the Roman's be Roman's, he just wants a privileged position in their society. The Roman tech level is 1, he works on advancing the tech level to 7, introduces gunpowder, the internal combustion engine the airplane, the machine gun, etc.

Some social reforms sneak past him, advanced technology, the printing press causes Christianity to spread faster than in the original history. I'm not sure what these Christian's make of this stranger from the future. Some ideas spread faster, a few slave rebellions occur, as their work gets lighter due to advanced industrial automation, and no one discourages them to learn to read, they organize a rebellion, and the Germanic Tribes form an army.

Been enjoying the conversation everyone's having with this, but honestly my mind has gone less the "time travel" route, and more the alternate history of classic Imperial Rome never collapsing, and thus when mankind reaches the stars, forms an empire, and the like it's all on the Roman model.

Pretty sure someone has done a write-up like that at some point, but just sharing the thought.

 

[Werner]

Been enjoying the conversation everyone's having with this, but honestly my mind has gone less the "time travel" route, and more the alternate history of classic Imperial Rome never collapsing, and thus when mankind reaches the stars, forms an empire, and the like it's all on the Roman model.

Pretty sure someone has done a write-up like that at some point, but just sharing the thought.

Needs a bit of the time travel element which is the Deus Ex Machina that gives the Roman's the technology to build an Interstellar empire, because it's easier to imagine them suddenly getting this technology than them lasting 5000 years and still being something that we'd recognize as the Roman Empire. The Time Traveller serves as the Deus Ex Machina allowing the Roman's to build an Interstellar empire in about 300 years instead of going into decline and falling. This interstellar empire remains majority pagan with Christianity as a significant yet still a minority religion, the World' population exploded due to medical advances and large Roman families. In the first one hundred years the Roman Empire industrialized, in the second one hundred years they colonize space and develop the Jump Drive, and during the third one hundred years they build an Interstellar Roman Empire and make contact with the First Imperium.

 

[Condottiere]

You don't have to completely modernize the Legions; introduce stirrups and light lances for medium cavalry, keep the Numidians as well as the slingers.

Introduce the Parthians to cannons, high explosives and grapeshot.

Half of the Republics problems are social, so you have to move the capitol and turn the proletariat into involuntary colonists, to strengthen the borders.

There are three strategic locations for the new capitol, Milan, Byzantium and Sicily.

 

[Enoki]

This is sounding a lot like Jerry Pournelle's Jannisaries series...

 

[Werner]

You don't have to completely modernize the Legions; introduce stirrups and light lances for medium cavalry, keep the Numidians as well as the slingers.

Introduce the Parthians to cannons, high explosives and grapeshot.

Half of the Republics problems are social, so you have to move the capitol and turn the proletariat into involuntary colonists, to strengthen the borders.

There are three strategic locations for the new capitol, Milan, Byzantium and Sicily.

They could also colonize Manhattan, and it would be a real colony out in the wilderness, Milan, Byzantium, and Sicily aren't exactly frontiers, but the site of New York City, would be an excellent location for the New Roman Empire, it has deep water harbors excellent for ship building, and lots of trees, Manhattan and the surrounding lands are covered in forest at this time, there probably will be some Indian tribes living in the area.

 

[Condottiere]

Let's call it immediate frontiers, to prevent Volkerwanderung, and stabilize the Middle East.

My choice would be Sicily, which would control the western Mediterranean and have a natural moat; Britain as spring board to North America, New Amsterdam as spring board to the East Coast.

 

[Werner]

Let's call it immediate frontiers, to prevent Volkerwanderung, and stabilize the Middle East.

My choice would be Sicily, which would control the western Mediterranean and have a natural moat; Britain as spring board to North America, New Amsterdam as spring board to the East Coast.

The Roman's would probably call it Roma Nova or New Rome, it wouldn't escape them that New York City was the Capitol of Terra in the other Universe, so it might be a great Capitol of a world wide Roman Empire in this one. Regarding names of places, since the Roman's would be learning their geography from a map printed out from the time traveller's stolen Scout ship, they might decide just to use the names printed on the map for natural features, thus they will keep the names of the continents that the find on the map, thus they will be named Europa, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia, and Antarctica, since they didn't discover those continents themselves, they aren't going to bother to make original Roman names for them, so they will leave them as printed on the map. The cities shown on the map won't exist, so the Roman's will have to build cities if they want cities in those places, so the cities they build, they will name. Roma Nova will be built on Manhattan island between the Hudson, Harlem, and East Rivers. Long Island will probably keep its name but translated into Latin.

The Roman's might even use the Common Era dating system because of all the information found in the Ship's Library relating to events occurring before 113 AD which is the same as on the original timeline, and it is a positive number unlike the Imperial dating system if they used that. The planets get their names the same as ours including the planets the Roman's haven't discovered yet. For when the Roman's expand out into space, we will use the Solomani Rim map, the worlds retain their original names from the Ship's charts, the physical data of each world is likely to be the same, the social data is probably different. Assume the Roman's advance 1 tech level every 20 years, so in the first 20 years they go from TL1 to TL2, after 40 years they are at TL3, after 60 years they reach TL4, after 80 they get to TL5, at 100 years they reach TL6, and at 120 years or 233 AD they reach TL7 at rough parody with our modern world today, probably the world population would have reach 1 billion at this time, roughly the same population our world had in the 18th to 19th centuries.

By 233 AD the Roman's would have launched their first satellites into orbit, by 253 they build their first fusion reactors, they don't need to experiment, since they already have plans on how to build them, they just need to build the TL8 infrastructure and technological base first. The Roman's build their gravity vehicles out of standard plans from the Scout ship, the ship's database will contain standard plans for starships, and the Roman's being the copycats they are will stick to those plans when constructing their own starships, so their will be Roman Scout/Couriers, Roman Free Traders, Roman Mercenary Cruisers and the like. Rome will have a lot of small ships under 1000 dtons, they will probably also be using the metric system as well.

 

[Krikkitone]

There are a few possible interesting problems

1. Initial reception, does the time traveller get killed/assassinated/sick and die. (Either from those who Don't realize the significance of what he has OR those who do... he's going to upset the apple cart and a lot of people are going to lose power)

2. Changes to the Empire.... the Roman empire was set up as a TL 1 enterprise...faster communications, different weapons, industrial economy, all significantly change who has power... and that could result in a civil war/revolution

3. The others... the gunpowder wars of the 17-1800s (as people around the world got access to muskets) would happen ~1500 years early. Rome would have to rapidly conquer/genocide the rest of humanity to actually attain prominence. And if they went with conquest... that just sets up potential Rebellions down the line.

 

[Werner]

There are a few possible interesting problems

1. Initial reception, does the time traveller get killed/assassinated/sick and die. (Either from those who Don't realize the significance of what he has OR those who do... he's going to upset the apple cart and a lot of people are going to lose power)

2. Changes to the Empire.... the Roman empire was set up as a TL 1 enterprise...faster communications, different weapons, industrial economy, all significantly change who has power... and that could result in a civil war/revolution

3. The others... the gunpowder wars of the 17-1800s (as people around the world got access to muskets) would happen ~1500 years early. Rome would have to rapidly conquer/genocide the rest of humanity to actually attain prominence. And if they went with conquest... that just sets up potential Rebellions down the line.

Yes, all of those are Adventuring possibilities, that is what adventures are, problems to be solved by player characters. Each of these problems you mention is a possible adventure hook. The Time Traveller is not a player character, he is simply the one who sets these events in motion. There are a number of possibilities as to who the player characters are.

1) player characters could be from the OTU, the Third Imperium recovers the Scout/Courier that was stolen, one of the three researchers stole it back, fixed the fuel Processor and jumped through the wormhole the time drive contained, or perhaps one of the researcher's descendants did. The Scout/Ship has the ability to move forward in time, if it fills its jump fuel tank with hydrogen, it can reach relativistic velocity and time dilate the ship forward in time a number or years or even centuries without that time passing in the OTU, so if the Scout ship is send back, the PCs could use it to explore this changed timeline. One idea is a pair of escaped Roman slaves steals the ship and crosses over to the OTU, and begs the PCs for help, perhaps to rescue some friends of theirs and they will hand over the ship in exchange.

2) The players are natives of this setting, and must deal with whatever changed circumstances presented by this rapidly changing technology in this setting, the technology is rapidly outpacing social progress in this setting, there is still slavery, women have no rights, lots of things wrong with it, and there is the arena, the Roman's never ended the practice of staging arena blood sports in their stadiums, that is a thing. People tend to be enslaved for various reasons: committing a crime, being defeated in battle, going into debt and being unable to pay back their creditors, not being able to pay the medical Bill's after being treated in a hospital, failure to pay one's taxes, all these offenses can result in enslavement.

 

[whartung]

The thing is, copper is not cheap in antiquity. Nor overly precious, but still not cheap. Getting enough to make the stills for fractional distillation of petrochem is the initial bar. Once you have the still, tar, kerosene and gasoline are easily used.

The trick there is convincing anyone it's worth the trouble to make in the first place.

They already had oils lamps, could you sell it as a better lamp oil? Dunno about that.

You need the raw drilling and pumping industry, then the refinement industry, and then "something(s)" to burn it all in.

Sure, we all know about gas and cars, but that's not how the industry started. It took off with Kerosene. But, I'm not quite sure what the primary use case was for the Kerosene in the public space. Heat? Light? Industrial power?

 

[whartung]

Been enjoying the conversation everyone's having with this, but honestly my mind has gone less the "time travel" route, and more the alternate history of classic Imperial Rome never collapsing, and thus when mankind reaches the stars, forms an empire, and the like it's all on the Roman model.

Pretty sure someone has done a write-up like that at some point, but just sharing the thought.

Which parts of the Roman model?

I'm not a Roman historian, nor a student honestly, but what parts would "uplift" appropriately and scale out?

Pretty sure it wouldn't turn out like the Star Trek episode. None of that stuff (slavery, gladiators games, etc.) really scale well.

 

[Werner]

Which parts of the Roman model?

I'm not a Roman historian, nor a student honestly, but what parts would "uplift" appropriately and scale out?

Pretty sure it wouldn't turn out like the Star Trek episode. None of that stuff (slavery, gladiators games, etc.) really scale well.

Why not slavery? If you give the Roman's high technology, how would you convince them to give up slavery? Slavery was a part of their life going back before recorded history. If you ask people to give up slavery, you are asking them to give up their property. The way the Romans looked at it, slavery was preferable to an execution. If someone committed a crime, then making him a slave to make him pay for his crime made perfect sense. The Romans didn't have America's history, their slavery wasn't race based, they were equal opportunity enslaves, besides having things like that adds conflict.

You want to include things about Roman society that players might not like, it gives them motivation to go adventuring and perhaps fix things, make their mark on this world. The Romans didn't see slavery as wrong, they didn't want to be slaves themselves, but they saw nothing wrong with enslaving others or owning slaves. For instance if Romans are in a battle and they win, part of the loot they take are enslaved defeated enemy soldiers. The soldiers figure they risked their lives in defeating them and so they are owed something, so they take slaves. Part of the benefits of a soldier's life is to the Victor's goes the spoils. The Spoils system is very much in operation during the 2nd century. So what happens if you tech up the Roman Empire and they keep slavery and the spoils system? Well one thing is if they conquer the World, then the Roman Legions become more of a law enforcement force, the soldiers get less loot because there are fewer battles to fight. Soldiers will then demand higher salaries for the boring duty of soldiering during peacetime. Eventually over time most of the slaves end up as citizens, there are fewer slaves, and those slaves that exist are enslaved as punishment for crimes or enslaved to pay off a debt.

 

[Diveguy]

Needs a bit of the time travel element which is the Deus Ex Machina that gives the Roman's the technology to build an Interstellar empire, because it's easier to imagine them suddenly getting this technology than them lasting 5000 years and still being something that we'd recognize as the Roman Empire. The Time Traveller serves as the Deus Ex Machina allowing the Roman's to build an Interstellar empire in about 300 years instead of going into decline and falling. This interstellar empire remains majority pagan with Christianity as a significant yet still a minority religion, the World' population exploded due to medical advances and large Roman families. In the first one hundred years the Roman Empire industrialized, in the second one hundred years they colonize space and develop the Jump Drive, and during the third one hundred years they build an Interstellar Roman Empire and make contact with the First Imperium.

Or you go the handwavium option of some near/far future polity "resurrects" what they see as the Roman model (in their ideal) as a new government. It would be far from the first time in real history for similar shenanigans.

 

[kilemall]

The trick there is convincing anyone it's worth the trouble to make in the first place.

They already had oils lamps, could you sell it as a better lamp oil? Dunno about that.

You need the raw drilling and pumping industry, then the refinement industry, and then "something(s)" to burn it all in.

Sure, we all know about gas and cars, but that's not how the industry started. It took off with Kerosene. But, I'm not quite sure what the primary use case was for the Kerosene in the public space. Heat? Light? Industrial power?

Light mostly, followed by heat.


Coal gas was a manufactured type of Natural Gas more in line with gaslamp and other infrastructure pipeline systems, begat from steelmaking, a very toxic creation process.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas


Kerosene as you implied was the original primary product of refining, they used to burn off the gasoline until they investigated what products could be made from it.

 

[Werner]

Or you go the handwavium option of some near/far future polity "resurrects" what they see as the Roman model (in their ideal) as a new government. It would be far from the first time in real history for similar shenanigans.

Naw, too complicated.

 

[Enoki]

The trick there is convincing anyone it's worth the trouble to make in the first place.

They already had oils lamps, could you sell it as a better lamp oil? Dunno about that.

You need the raw drilling and pumping industry, then the refinement industry, and then "something(s)" to burn it all in.

Sure, we all know about gas and cars, but that's not how the industry started. It took off with Kerosene. But, I'm not quite sure what the primary use case was for the Kerosene in the public space. Heat? Light? Industrial power?

Kerosene was used for both lighting in lamps

Heating, and for power in kerosene engines

Gasoline was adopted for engines simply because it has a much higher specific energy content than kerosene. That is, it's more efficient. Electricity replaced kerosene for lighting for the same reason.

 

[whartung]

Why not slavery?

Because the simple fact is that slavery doesn't seem to last when human power is no longer the primary source of work and energy.

While there are certainly elements that still exist today, in our vast world, we do not have a slave industry anymore. We (human society at large) scaled out of it.

As an institution, it's just not very efficient.

 

[Werner]

Because the simple fact is that slavery doesn't seem to last when human power is no longer the primary source of work and energy.

While there are certainly elements that still exist today, in our vast world, we do not have a slave industry anymore. We (human society at large) scaled out of it.

As an institution, it's just not very efficient.

No it isn't, but the Nazis employed slave labor during World War II, and Roman slaves were often educated, and the condition was often temporary, unlike the case in Early America. Roman's often had children with their slaves, they could do all sorts of jobs besides agricultural work, and since slaves were an investment, they would get Healthcare, much as a farmer would call in a vet if his horse was sick. I don't want a perfect world, I want a world the PCs might try to improve upon, and slavery was one of the key features of the classic Roman Empire. PCs need a cause to crusade for.

 

[Enoki]

Because the simple fact is that slavery doesn't seem to last when human power is no longer the primary source of work and energy.

While there are certainly elements that still exist today, in our vast world, we do not have a slave industry anymore. We (human society at large) scaled out of it.

As an institution, it's just not very efficient.

Exactly. Once you can get more work out of another source, slavery loses its utility. For example, if our time traveler showed the Romans a better harness and wagon design that made horse teams capable of moving more stuff than human slaves consuming the same resources were capable of, slaves are no longer economically competitive to move stuff. The result is you hire a laborer to operate the horse team and wagon, maybe load and unload it too. That becomes the new model of economic efficiency at moving stuff.